


Dancing and Danger

by jalendavi_lady



Series: Winry And Roy series from fma_fic_contest [21]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - First Anime, Community: fma_fic_contest, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-27
Updated: 2010-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few weeks after discovering dancing can help with Roy's lingering leg problems, he and Winry dance alone. She jokes about the dangers of swing dancing, he tries to get her to promise to stay out of real danger, and she lets him have it for assuming she can't take care of herself and doesn't understand the risks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing and Danger

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Touching (501-1000 words) prompt at [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fma_fic_contest/profile)[**fma_fic_contest**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fma_fic_contest/) .

Thanks for offering to do this again," he said in the static-filled stillness between songs on the record. "It's really helped that muscle unstiffen."

She shook her head and smiled. "No problem at all. Like I told you at Riza's wedding, I don't get to dance with someone who understands rhythm and form all that often."

Roy sighed. "I'd expected the latest musical movement to change that."

"It just got them better at faking." Winry fell silent as the music started and they began dancing, adjusting the speed of the waltzing pattern to the new tempo. Only then did she start talking again. "And really, for some of them it is just showing off how well they can sling ladies around a room. I've had plenty of danger in my life without facing it on a dance floor."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "I still can't believe half of what you got yourself involved in. Wiretapping the _fuhrer_?"

"Says the man who hunted him in his own wine cellar," she shot back.

"With military and alchemy training, _and_ the blueprints to the house. It took _months_ to set that up. And you and Sheska just went exploring through an access crawlspace with some spare wires?"

She blushed, and was silent for a minute or so. "Actually... we found the wires there."

"Winry!" She felt his hand convulse around hers.

"Roy, I haven't done anything insanely dangerous since that invasion from wherever Ed and Al are."

"That hot-air balloon was perfectly safe," he defended.

"I was talking about walking straight into a city I knew was going to be under full assault soon. Sheska and I nearly had buildings fall on us. _Twice_."

Roy Mustang was completely silent through the end of the song, but Winry could feel the stiffness of his steps and the way the shoulder muscles in his back were knotting and unknotting under her hand, so much that she could clearly feel it even through his shirt and undershirt.

Also telling was the way he had his head tilted so that she couldn't see his eye clearly.

The song ended. They stood together, still, as the record ended and the long static began.

He finally managed to pull himself back together a few minutes later. "Please don't do something like that again," he asked, sounding like he had the mother of all lumps in his throat.

"Roy, I can't promise that. If my country is in trouble and I see a way for _me_ to help, I take it. And besides, I was _already_ in Central before that gate-thing opened. If it's between waiting for the end to come and fighting it, _I_ fight."

She pulled away in preparation for dealing with the record player, and shrugged in an attempt to lower the tension in the room.

"It's not like it matters. It's been how many years since the invasion? And the last truly major conflict we Amestrians had within our world _was_ the Revolution."

Roy shook his head. "You don't know what you're saying..."

"I've been facing my own mortality since I was a kid. Even if the rest of Central's forgotten that if the military had shown up thirty minutes later the Chopper would have killed Ed and I, _I_ haven't." She felt herself start tearing up - she still hated remembering that, the vulnerability she'd always tried to make sure she never felt again. "And I'm an automailer. _Both_ mechanic and surgeon. Know how many times I've had someone die on me?"

Roy shook his head, eye wide and clearly horrified.

"Well over thirty now. Five while I was the primary surgeon. All from complications we couldn't have predicted until it was _well_ past too late to do anything. First person to die on me was when I was thirteen. His name was Roger Burke, and his father used to work at the Risembool train depot. Roger was a war veteran who lost a foot in one of the last major battles in Ishbal. Undetected aortic aneurysm, and the stress made it fail. I don't know who cried longer: me, Grandmother or his father..."

And then she couldn't say anymore because her voice was hitching too much.

She suddenly found her face pressed into his shirt.

"Sorry for underestimating you," he whispered.

The record player hissed on.


End file.
